


Evenly Matched

by alocalband



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Curse Breaking, First Kiss, Fluff, Fox Stiles, Hand Jobs, M/M, Scenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocalband/pseuds/alocalband
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles gets turned into a fox. Somehow this impacts Derek's life just as much as his own. (post 3b)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evenly Matched

**Author's Note:**

> This is me randomly putting some of my Tumblr fic up onto AO3, for reasons as yet unknown. Possibly insomnia.
> 
>  
> 
> ***The beautiful fanart now included with the story was done by the ever so lovely[geeky-sova.](http://geeky-sova.tumblr.com/post/114848179754/something-inspired-by-the-cutest-fic-called-evenly)**

“So, I’m a fox now,” Stiles says blandly and blinks at his friends, unimpressed. “Not even a _demon_ fox this time; you’re telling me that I am literally now a fox. Fur coat, tail and all.”

No one looks all that worried about it, though. Isaac’s doing a really poor job of concealing outright laughter.

To be fair, this is probably the tamest problem they’ve faced this past year.

Still.

“A _fox_ ,” Stiles reiterates. And then Isaac all out doubles over in hysterics, and Scott actually chuckles before slapping a quick hand over his own mouth.

“Sorry,” Scott says sincerely, once he’s composed himself and removed his hand. “It’s just really weird-looking when you talk.”

“You look like bad CGI!” Isaac crows through his cackling, actual tears in his eyes now from it. “You’re right in front of me but when you move your lips it looks like really bad graphics in a kids movie from the nineties, oh my god this is the _best_.”

Stiles remains unimpressed. He hopes his little fox face manages to convey as much, but judging by how Kira looks about ten seconds from cooing at him and rubbing his belly he guesses not.

He turns to Lydia and pleads, “ _Fix it._ ”

Lydia huffs a breath, rolls her eyes, and mutters unflattering things about curiosity having killed apparently “quite a few more species other than feline,” all the way back to her car while the rest of them follow.

Stiles chooses not to argue with Lydia solely because he wants her to remain focused on the task at hand, and not because she has a point. Really. Poking at a rune-covered boulder until it reacted is not a “curiosity killed the cat” situation. It’s a “this shit is eventually going to wreak havoc on our lives in some way and I’d rather get it over with now” situation. Big difference.

But Stiles bites his tongue. His tiny, pink _fox tongue_. Because he is apparently an actual fox now. Fucking hell.

Deaton assures them that he’ll have everything fixed by the end of the week, though Stiles is suspicious of the fact that Deaton’s phrasing of _how_ he’ll fix everything basically boils down to “I know a guy who knows a guy.”

Things get officially awkward when Stiles suddenly realizes two separate facts simultaneously. First, he doesn’t have opposable thumbs anymore. Funny the things you don’t really appreciate until they’re gone. Second, his dad is currently three hours away, consulting on a murder investigation in a town just on the edge of Beacon County. Since the murder rate everywhere in the area that _isn’t_ Beacon Hills is generally so low it sets the good kind of records, it’s presumably an important case.

“Okay, so whose new Pokemon am I?” Stiles asks while sitting on the examination table in Deaton’s backroom. He goes for flippant, but his tail keeps wrapping around the rest of his body protectively, giving away his vulnerability, and he hasn’t figured out yet how to switch that off. Stupid emotion-projecting tail.

Everyone has their excuses and they’re all sort of looking at Scott from the get-go anyway. Even Scott is looking at Scott, because bros before pet hotels, or whatever.

But apparently Melissa is deathly allergic to anything with fur and this is officially the most ridiculous thing to ever happen in this crazy-ass town. Stiles can’t open doors or feed himself, he has a tail that keeps trying to broadcast all of his inner most feelings, and his best friend slash alpha can’t take him in because of parental _allergies_. Stiles wants a refund on this particular movie ticket. Whatever writer is currently acting as showrunner of his life owes the audience an apology.

So he gets foisted onto Derek. Because of course he does. Why not. Everything terrible that’s ever happened in the history of the world eventually makes its way back to the guy, so Scott’s probably just skipping a few extraneous steps by taking Stiles straight to the loft after Deaton’s.

“He told me he’d rather go make it on his own in the preserve than stay here,” Scott explains to Derek when they arrive, “but I have a feeling he’d be dead by morning if I let him. So, uh. Could you?”

Derek sighs heavily. Stiles wishes he actually had fingers right now so that he could show Scott one of them in particular.

Cohabitating with Derek isn’t the issue, honestly. He thinks he could probably pull that one off. Cohabitating while _expressly relying on Derek for everything_ is the issue. 

For about six consecutive hours he and Derek manage to more or less avoid each other. Derek does whatever it is Derek does, and Stiles explores all of the loft’s nooks and crannies that he would otherwise be unable to when not, you know, bite-sized.

But the place is only so big and eventually Stiles gets bored. And then he gets tired. And Stiles refuses to sleep in an air duct, so.

He slinks over to where Derek is reading on the couch, some time around midnight. “This is going to sound weird,” he says.

Derek doesn’t even look up. He turns the page in his book and says, “It already sounds weird. The fact that you are capable of human speech right now makes it weird.”

Stiles rolls his little fox eyes but doesn’t back down. He steels himself as best as he can and asks, “Can I sleep on your pillow?”

Derek finally looks up at that. He blinks. “What.” God, he doesn’t even make it a question.

If Stiles were human right now there might be some flailing limbs. Or some blushing. Or... something. He doesn’t know what, but he does know that his body would react somehow and attempt to hide how fucking nervous he is.

The fox body, however, stays perfectly still. _Except for the damn tail._ That soft and fluffy _douchebag_ tail that immediately wraps tightly around Stiles’ middle in a clear declaration of how vulnerable he is, how much he’s trying to protect himself.

Derek swallows and purses his lips while watching this happen, but Stiles doesn’t know how to interpret that so he ignores it.

“Look, I’ve been prowling around here all night,” he explains in a vain attempt at keeping this conversation on point. “And for some reason I keep ending up crawling back towards your bedroom? I think I’m gonna need to borrow your laundry detergent when I’m actually me again because whatever that scent is coming from your sheets, it’s fucking _amazing_.”

Derek twitches and averts his eyes at this, but Stiles barrels on regardless because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do. Also, he’s a fox. His options as far as human interaction go are extremely limited.

“So I was just gonna _not_ sleep tonight, because that felt like the best option for everyone, but then I thought if I could maybe be somewhere that feels safe then I’d be okay? Which is what your laundry detergent apparently feels like. And I’m sorry, I’m exhausted, man, so I hope at least some of that even remotely made sense.”

Derek stares at him for a moment, expression hard and unreadable. But then, slowly, he sets his book aside and gets up from the couch. “If you claw my face in your sleep, I will skin you and give your pelt to Lydia.”

“Wow, graphic.” Stiles smirks. Or tries to. He wishes he had a mirror to judge it, because his ability to physically emote is completely fucked right now.

Circling the same spot three times before lying down on Derek’s pillow somehow feels natural enough that Stiles doesn’t question it in the moment. Once he’s settled, however, he can feel his little fox ears perk up and that traitorous blabbermouth of a tail of his start to fucking _wag_ even while Stiles’ eyelids droop. Because Derek has just laid down beside him, head resting on the spare pillow from the couch, and he’s dressed in nothing but dark grey Under Armor and a white, threadbare Fruit of the Loom t-shirt.

Stiles has, more likely than not, just entered the lowest circle of hell. Cursed into the body of a small woodland creature while lying three inches from a practically naked Greek god. Is there an epic poem about this particular kind of trial? There should totally be an epic poem.

But then Stiles immediately falls asleep for the first time in over a year? Whatever, he’ll take it. Small mercies are completely underrated. Sleep is so preferable to trying to describe Derek Hale’s biceps in iambic pentameter in his head.

If he dreams of Derek’s fingers carding softly through the fur on his back all the way down to the tip of his tail, over and over again, then so be it. It’s just a dream, right? Of course it is. A strangely satisfying and intensely real dream.

When Stiles wakes up, everything had already gone to shit about five minutes prior.

“I didn’t _do_ anything, Scott,” Derek is quietly hissing into his cell phone at the opposite end of the loft. The only other sounds are: coffee percolating in the kitchen, the wind of an oncoming summer storm lightly shaking the windows.

“No, Scott, I’m not--“ Derek cuts himself off with a huff. “Look,” he says, hand winding through his hair aggressively. Stiles buries his face further into Derek’s pillow and tries not to panic over the realization that _holy shit_ this is _Derek’s pillow_ and Stiles is _human again now_ and has no good excuse to explain away how good that pillow still smells. Also, oh yeah, he’s kind of naked.

“He changed back when we were both asleep,” Derek says. “I only woke up because the snoring got louder, okay? I had nothing to do with it.”

There’s a pause during which Stiles watches Derek’s profile grow exponentially more tense as he listens to whatever Scott has to say. “That’s impossible,” Derek whispers on an exhale. “Scott, I didn’t-- I don’t--” Derek cuts himself off again, this time with a sharp turn of his head towards the bed and his eyes immediately hone in on Stiles watching him. Crap. “I’ll call you back,” he says shortly, and hangs up without waiting for a response.

“Um. Morning?” Stiles tries with forced levity as Derek stalks towards the bed. “So I guess Deaton’s thingamawhatsit actually worked, huh? Because I am decidedly not fox-shaped anymore and I don’t see anyone laughing about what my mouth looks like when I form words, so... Yay?”

“Deaton didn’t do this,” Derek says, his expression giving away absolutely nothing.

“So it just fixed itself on its own? Awesome. I am so here for that shit. Why can’t all supernatural problems be that easy? No hunting down magical objects or going all ‘Law and Order’ on every lying a-hole who might have some piece of vaguely misleading information. Just, you know, wait it out. I love it.”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, hangs his head, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

Stiles sits up fully, carefully wrapping the sheets around his torso so that nothing embarrassing gets exposed. He’s already blushing just from being naked from the waist up, but he’ll gladly pretend that redness is just a result of the slight chill in the air. The atmosphere feels charged with what’ll probably be a decent thunderstorm any moment now. Like the imminent lightning is giving them subtle warning on the edges of the breeze.

“Derek?” Stiles says seriously, because seriousness suddenly feels warranted.

Derek sighs again and sits down on the edge of the bed near Stiles’ hip. “Scott thinks I broke the curse.”

“It was a curse?”

“...Possibly.”

“Okay. And you _possibly_ broke it by...?”

Derek shifts stiffly and remains silent.

“Dude, if this turns out to be some sort of Sleeping Beauty deal, I am _out_ , okay? I cannot deal with a true love’s kiss scenario. I have officially reached my limit of clichéd supernatural melodrama.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I didn’t _kiss you_ , Stiles. Christ.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Scott thinks you were cured because I... Because you were with me. And when someone goes through a drastic transformation like you did when you became a fox, pulling them back to themselves can sometimes be attributed to a significant relationship being... fully realized.”

“’Fully realized?’ Like, what? Consummated? Or, I guess just even admitted to, right? Like Lydia bringing Jackson back from the dead.”

“Yes.”

“But we are definitely _not_ Lydia and Jackson, so what the hell?”

“I...” Derek swallows and shifts again in obvious discomfort, averting his gaze for a moment. “My idea of who you are to me may have recently shifted,” he says to the floor.

Stiles swallows heavily. “I really don’t know what that means, dude. You’re gonna have to help me out here.”

Derek doesn’t respond for long enough that Stiles starts to worry. He reaches the hand that's not clutching the sheet to his waist and touches Derek’s forearm.

Derek looks up, then away again. He stares at Stiles’ hand on his arm, then he moves his own arm up. Runs his knuckles lightly across the top of Stiles’ right pectoral, just beneath his breastbone, and then splays his fingers out wide over Stiles’ bicep, just below his shoulder.

“...I missed you,” Derek says, frowning down at his own hand now, where it rests on Stiles’ arm.

“What?”

“I kept meeting this thing in your body, I kept seeing you but not actually being with _you_ , and I didn’t realize until recently that this had bothered me as much as it did. I didn’t put together until a little while ago that I was upset about that. I missed you.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to do with any of this.

Derek glances up and meets his eyes. “But when you were a fox last night, it didn’t feel like it did with the nogitsune. It didn’t feel like I was seeing a facsimile of you, because it _was_ you, the real you, underneath it all, and I could tell. And that... that was enough.” Derek shrugs his shoulders slightly, almost miserably, like he thinks by saying everything that he just did that he’s committed some crime he’s about to get punished for.

Stiles takes a deep breath. Tries not to panic. “Enough for what, Derek?”

Derek grips his arm a little tighter. “Enough to realize that the physical form doesn’t matter. As long as it’s _you_ , actually you, I want to be around.”

There’s a heavy pause before Stiles can compose himself enough to choke out a stilted, “I, uh, I missed you too, man.”

One side of Derek’s mouth quirks up briefly, a smile cut short. But then Derek’s hand slides down from Stiles’ bicep to rest on his waist. Stiles gulps. Derek closes his eyes and breathes out. “I didn’t know,” he says, like it’s a declaration. Like the consequences of saying it will be the end of him. “I didn’t know that missing you also meant that I wanted to be near you. And it’s possible that that’s what broke the curse. It might not seem significant in the grand scheme of things. But for me it was. So that might be what did it.”

Stiles blinks suspiciously wet eyes, breathing suddenly ragged. “ _I missed you too, Derek,_ ” he says again, hushed and urgent, moving his hand up to cup Derek’s jaw.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to happen, isn’t really thinking at all, but Derek surges forward then and kisses him, and it feels like a million different things he didn’t know he wanted until right now. It feels like walking into an unexpectedly familiar room.

The moment Derek’s tongue pushes into Stiles’ mouth it’s all over, and who knows how many minutes pass until they find themselves lying down, tangled up in each other a much as the bedding, and panting.

Derek cups Stiles’ erection through the sheets, strokes up and down a few times times, then holds it tightly as Stiles groans.

But then, “I’m sorry,” he breathes out, starting to pull away, “I shouldn’t--“

“Save your ‘sorry’s’ for later, just keep doing _that. Please._ ” Stiles pleads, moans.

Derek strokes his dick again, once, a little more tentative now. But holy shit, there’s not even skin on skin contact and Stiles can still feel it in his fucking toes. “Wow this is going to be super fast, I apologize in advance.”

“Save your ‘sorry’s’ for later,” Derek smirks, and then takes Stiles' hand and pulls it down to feel Derek’s own erection, hot and hard in his jeans. There’s already a wet spot at the head, Stiles notices dumbly, and when Stiles strokes over the fabric a few times, grip as tight as he can make it given the restrictions, Derek comes on a shuttered sigh, like it’s a relief. Like he didn’t think he’d ever be allowed this.

Stiles comes about fifteen seconds later into the sheets still wrapped around his waist. He’s pretty sure this ranks about an eleven on the ‘completely embarrassing sexual encounters’ scale. They haven’t even actually touched each other's dicks, what the hell.

“If just that much feels this great, I think anything up from a blowjob is going to kill us both,” Stiles breathes into Derek’s neck.

Derek huffs a laugh, and then shifts around until he’s buried into the sheets at Stiles’ side, arm around Stiles’ waist, cheek smashed into Stiles’ collarbone.

“We’re going to feel disgusting in about five minutes,” Stiles warns. “Actually, scratch that, I already feel pretty gross. How does showering sound?”

Derek snuffles--he actually fucking _snuffles_ \--into Stiles’ skin and murmurs, “Just... give me ten minutes. I want to enjoy the moment.”

Stiles bites down on his grin, carding his fingers through Derek’s surprisingly soft hair. “You want to bask in the afterglow? Dude, are you a _cuddler_?”

Derek makes a displeased noise, but then shuffles his way even further towards Stiles so that he’s half under him now as well as half on top of him.

“You weirdo,” Stiles sighs, a little more fondly than he was aiming for.

Derek harrumphs. “You had a tail less than twelve hours ago. I think we’re evenly matched.”

Stiles suppresses yet another grin at that. Because it feels true. It feels comforting and exciting at the same time. _Evenly matched._ It hadn’t ever even occurred to Stiles before, but now that it’s been said out loud it seems so obvious. A give and take that always balances out. A push and pull that always ends up centered. That’s what he and Derek are. Have always been in one way or another. And, suddenly, Stiles is certain, it’s what they’ll always be.

***

  



End file.
